Come and Find Me
by CileSuns92
Summary: One-shot. A what-if/AU version of the gallery scene with Derek and the runaway little girl from episode 11x18.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy, Shondaland does. Any medical terminology here is used for entertainment purposes, consult a textbook if you ever need to retrieve organs for a donation. Also, Josh Ritter owns the song **_**Come and Find Me**_**, I can only listen to it over and over again on Spotify when the mood strikes.**

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**So, I'm supposed to post on a lot of other stories, I know that better than anybody else, but I'd figured you all deserved an Easter treat. Now, does this one-shot have anything to do with Easter? No way. There's fluff though, I hope it will be enough.**

**As soon as I saw Derek sitting in the gallery with the missing little girl from 11x18, I immediately imagined Derek doing the same with Zola. This is the byproduct of my overeager brain. Gosh, if I could multitask like this when I study…**

**Without further ado, enjoy!**

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**Come and Find Me**

* * *

_I draw you close with every breath_

_you don't know it's right until it's wrong_

_You don't know it's yours until it's gone_

_I didn't know that it was home 'til you up and left._

_Come and find me, now._

* * *

The alarm clock shrieks into their barely lit room, the soft, whitish light filtering from their blinds.

Meredith groans in his arms.

"No wok," she mutters into her pillow, tightening his arms around her body.

Derek grins, kissing the back of her neck, relishing the closeness. He basks in the quiet moment of having Meredith near, knowing that he'd have to wait an entire day most likely to feel her curves mold into his. He sighs contentedly.

A loud noise coming from outside their bedroom startles them both, making Meredith groan again.

"Bailey, no!" they hear from outside their closed door, and Meredith moans, knowing exactly what is going on.

"I'll go save the day and get the kids ready for daycare," Derek suggests, kissing the back of her neck.

"I wanna stay in bed," Meredith whines, rolling on her side to face him. She rubs his cheek, kisses his lips gently, pats his hair before she graces him with a lazy smile.

"Day off tomorrow," he smiles at her, his turn to kiss her lips, and then the tip of her nose. She giggles, still sleepy and incoherent.

"Fine," she heaves out a fake deep breath. "Life-saving today, sleeping tomorrow."

"Exactly," he chuckles, sneaking out of her embrace after a long, deep kiss.

She looks so incredibly beautiful when she groans and burrows back into their covers, and Derek is reluctant to leave her there. Sounds of arguing though propel him into their living room.

Bailey has a foam block in his hand, throw mode on, while Zola is glaring at her brother, clutching her own foam block tightly in defense, her cover being the armrest of the couch.

"What's going on?" he asks his children tiredly, rubbing his face and trying to tame his hair.

"He started it!" Zola is quick to point out, only winning a block smack on her cheek. Derek sighs in relief that it's not one of the wooden blocks they are throwing at one another.

"Kids, it's six in the morning, what are you guys doing up already?"

"We heard the 'larm," Zola shrugs.

"Wakey, Dada!" Bailey shrieks, his hands going up in the air.

Derek can't help but grin as they both put on such innocent faces, so much like their mother's. Yeah, he needs to work on breakfast pronto.

By the time toast is popping out of the toaster, Bailey is kicking his legs from his highchair, Zola is pressing insistently on the jam seal lid, making it pop, waiting patiently for the rest of breakfast as she shoves a spoonful of cereal in her mouth in between playing with the jam.

Meredith appears in the kitchen already dressed, this morning opting for casual clothes to go to the hospital, showing her reluctance to get out of the house in the first place.

He turns around to watch Zola whisper things to her mother as Meredith ducks down to kiss her cheek, then Bailey throwing his arms around Meredith's neck as he begs to be picked up after his kiss, this time on top of his blonde head. Meredith basks in the hug, but doesn't pick up Bailey, opting to sit next to him on one of the stools, sending Derek a warm smile.

She still takes his breath away, sometimes.

"Food is almost ready," he says, and she keeps smiling, dazzling him. The toaster brings him back to reality.

Breakfast becomes a flurry of activity in a matter of moments, as his hungry family devours everything in sight. Derek is happy to just watch from his standing spot near the stove, content with a quick kiss or a stolen touch with each member of his family every time he gets near them with more food.

Zola holds up the conversation, Meredith becoming more and more awake by the second as the coffee starts seeping into her system, Bailey punctuating the discourse with his own shrieks and blabbered words. He knows more and more words by the day, but this morning he seems in a sour mood, barely touching his toast and claiming Meredith's attention a little more often than usual.

Derek is grateful Zola is oblivious, too busy with her dream recounts to care about the fact that her Mama keeps holding Bailey's hand all throughout breakfast. He blames the fact that his son probably missed her last night at bedtime, since Meredith was still in surgery and didn't come home until almost nine-thirty, when Bailey was already conked out in his crib, while Zola was still hanging onto her last bouts of energy to see Meredith home.

All things considered, he'll never get tired of having breakfast with his family like this. They make mapping brains in DC look insignificant compared to this. And it's especially beautiful to know that he can just reach out and hug and kiss them all whenever he wants to, there's no screen keeping them from him.

Derek revels in their ride to the hospital, glad that it's not raining today and they can stay out on the ferryboat deck, watching the birds and the waves. By the time they're all set to depart from Bainbridge though, Bailey has gone back to sleep, and Meredith is practically there herself, so he decides to take Zola out of the car and have her burn some energy as the other half of his family naps quietly. He gives a longing look at them after locking the doors, already missing their faces, no matter how ridiculous it sounds to him.

Zola keeps talking his ear off the entire length of the ride, but he doesn't mind it. He's glad she's there, next to him, her legs dangling from the bench on the deck, kicking back and forth in excitement.

"Daddy, are you gonna poke around into brains today?" Zola's face lights up, her eyes sparkling.

"I might poke around into a brain or two, yeah. Depends if Auntie Amy lets me," he chuckles.

"And Mama?"

"She's going to poke around people's bellies."

"Like in the videos?"

Derek is puzzled. "What videos?"

"The movies Mama watches when we're s'posed to be in bed. She gots popcorns and takes notes and there's lots of slimy pink stuff on the TV. I like pink!"

Derek's eyes widen. "Oh," he swallows. "Mama is...studying," he gulps.

"For her strugeries?"

"Yes, for her surgeries."

"She lets me watch sometimes, I think that's fun." Zola grins, her eyes searching Derek's almost for approval.

Derek frowns. Meredith lets Zola watch Ellis' surgical tapes? That's...odd. Expected, but odd. "Isn't that gross?"

"No!" Zola shrieks, surely excited now, turning a few heads towards them. "I saw the one when they was peeling a face and that was super fun! But Mama got mad I was spying on her."

Derek sighs. Maybe Meredith let her watch the laparoscopic stuff only, there wasn't much blood there. At least she drew the line at the face transplant. He definitely needs to know more about this.

"Do you peel faces, Daddy?"

Derek can't help but laugh at his daughter's excitement. They never wanted her to be a surgeon, but he figures that she'll end up being one only for the mere fact that Meredith is so devoted to her work, and Zola worships her mother.

He's proud his daughter is a little surgeon in the making, though. He just hopes she'll pick brains instead of general when the time comes. He would like to have a protegée to teach all his tricks to.

* * *

Derek sighs, stretching his hand to reach for the aneurysm clip, taking a deep breath. He can't believe he's almost done with his only aneurysm clipping for the day, and then he only has paperwork.

He figured he'd start slowly, since he still has a lot of DC loose ends to tie up, and lots of papers and paperwork to fill, but he's glad he can at least have surgery once a day now. He liked the lab work, but surgery? Surgery is definitely enough of a high. Maybe he had to go a little without surgery to really appreciate it, break his own routine to find out what really matters.

When he goes back with his eyes on the section of the brain visible from his incision, he's happy to be in an operating room instead of a laboratory.

A pager shrieks in the quiet of the OR, interrupting his focus for a moment.

"It's yours, Dr. Shepherd. It's the daycare," an intern informs him, his eyes snapping up immediately.

"Can you please call them, ask them what is going on?" he swallows thickly, hoping they just forgot a change of clothes for Bailey or something to bring in for one of Zola's craft projects.

The intern dials a number on the OR phone, as Derek resumes his work on the aneurysm, trying to keep his cool. He clips it neatly, forcing his hands not to shake.

"It's your son," the intern says, cradling the phone near her shoulder. "They say he's running a slight fever and threw up."

Derek sighs. "I'll be right there, tell them I'll pick him up half an hour tops, I need to rearrange my schedule first."

He takes a deep breath and leaves one of the second year residents to close up his patient, then he scrubs out as quickly as he can before migrating to look at the OR board. _Grey, M._ appears proudly next to _OR 1_, and he knows he has to sort it out on his own. He's glad when Amelia shows up right beside him.

"Hiya," she grins, tying up her scrub cap as she studies the board herself. "Trying to find a surgery to snatch from one of my Neuro fellows?"

Derek chuckles. "Just trying to find my wife. Bailey is running a fever, I wanted to tell her I was picking up the kids earlier and going home."

"Aw, give him a kiss for me," Amelia smiles sadly. "Do you want me to take Zola? I'm off in a couple of hours, we can go out for ice cream if Meredith finishes late."

"Nah, I'm taking both of them home. I just wanted to see where she was to tell her in person, but well..."

"I think the gallery is open," Amelia shrugs, before she switches the intern assisting her in her emergency craniotomy, then dashes off to scrub in.

Derek gathers his paperwork, taking his briefcase home, before he goes to pick up his children.

Only twenty-three minutes since the call in his OR, he did good.

As soon as Bailey's teacher sees him, she literally sighs in relief.

"He hasn't stopped crying from the minute your wife dropped him off," she admits, slightly blushing. "He's over there, we tried to let him sleep it off after he cried so much he threw up," she points to the room where the kids usually nap, and Derek enters quietly.

All the other little toddler beds are empty, except the one on the farther right, where Bailey is hiccuping, munching on his pacifier. Derek frowns. It's been forever since he has seen his little boy with a pacifier. His heart breaks for Bailey.

Derek kneels at his son's bedside, stroking his hair, now matted with sweat. His skin is burning. "Hey, Bailey," he murmurs, and the boy turns sleepily towards him. A sob erupts from his little lips. His hands are immediately reaching out.

"Dada," he murmurs around his pacifier, his voice catching in between the tears.

"We're going home, little man," he says gently, lifting him up and snuggling him against his scrubs.

"Mama," Bailey breathes out against his neck, tightening his hold on him. He's a little furnace.

"We're going to wait for her at home."

"Mama," he cries even louder, the pacifier falling in the crook of Derek's arm.

"What about we go see her working before we leave?" Derek suggests, but Bailey seems way too sick to care by this point. "Let's go get your sister first, then we'll go spy on Mama."

Derek kisses the burning top of Bailey's head, sighing as the boy relaxes in his hold. He gratefully grabs the boy's backpack and slings it around his shoulder, watching as Zola skips towards him, already wearing her own backpack, a smile on her face.

"Daddy! You done workin'?"

Derek sighs slowly. "Bailey is feeling sick, we're taking him home and taking care of him."

Zola immediately touches Bailey's socked foot, squeezing it. "Daddy is gonna get you all better, Bails!"

Derek smiles, freeing one of his hands to grab Zola's. They exit the daycare in this peculiar chain, Zola holding onto him gently, as she smiles at every person they meet on their way, talking about something they did in daycare.

He sees her eyes widening when they pass the doors she knows she can't get through, the one with big signs saying that it's for reserved personnel only, and Derek smiles at the fascination appearing on her face when they walk through this uncharted territory.

She moves closer to him as the flurry of activity increases, up to the moment they are going up the slightly dark staircase that leads to the OR gallery.

"Daddy, we're not going home," she states, forcing him to stop. Even Bailey lifts up his head, frowning in confusion, his eyes glassy as he keeps hiccuping.

"We're going to see Mama work first," he whispers, and Zola practically sprints up the stairs.

"Wow!" she blurts when she spots the big wired window of the gallery, delight painted on her face.

"Can I have some lap-pads?" they hear Meredith's muffled, croaky voice from the intercom. Zola's head snaps up to him.

"How come we can hear Mama?" she asks, and Derek moves closer to the intercom to increase the volume. All the OR sounds fill the empty gallery, including Meredith's voice, asking a question to one of the residents.

"Mama has a microphone inside, so she can teach people who want to watch from here."

"Daddy, can we watch?"

Derek is torn. Zola looks pretty excited, and Bailey is still sick, though the boy has relaxed considerably just from hearing his mother's steady, OR voice. His pitiful whining is now only a few sniffles here and there.

"Just a little while," he relents, because honestly, he loves watching Meredith work and it's been awhile since he had the chance to see her operate.

Zola hops on one of the chairs in the second row, her eyes zoning in on her mother right away. Derek settles next to her, sitting Bailey on his lap, the boy's cheek now resting over his heart.

"Suction, please," Meredith murmurs, and both the kids fall in a daze.

Derek watches fascinated as Zola takes in her mother's gestures one by one while he rubs Bailey's back in circles, the boy growing heavier in his arms.

"What is Mama doing now?" Zola asks, a focused look on her face.

Derek sighs. "She's taking out some organs from this man so that he can give them to other people and save their lives."

"How come he's giving them away? Doesn't he need them?"

Derek smiles at Zola's confused expression. "Well, he should use them, but his brain doesn't work anymore so he will not need them."

"I don't understand," Zola frowns.

"It's like...remember the batteries in Bailey's toy, the one that fell from the couch and broke?" Zola nods. "Well, the batteries still worked, but the toy wasn't working anymore."

"So you put them in the remote!" she clues in.

"Exactly. Mama is taking out this man's batteries because his body is broken, so that other people whose batteries don't work anymore can have them."

"Oh, Daddy, I wanna do that too. I wanna do what Mama does!"

Derek chuckles. "You need to study a lot to do that."

"I will. I learn good."

"You do, Lovebug," he grins, ducking down to plant a kiss on top of her curls. Zola is too enthralled by the surgery to be bothered.

"Liver's out," Meredith announces down in the OR, placing the dark-colored organ in a basin, straightening her back for a second.

Her eyes widen when she spots them. She raises her eyebrows. "Nurse, turn on the gallery intercom."

"Right away, Dr. Grey."

"What are you guys doing here?" she frowns.

"Mama!" Zola bounces in her seat. "You're changing that man's batteries all good!"

Meredith frowns, throwing Derek a soft, but poignant look.

"Bailey has a fever, I came here to tell you that we were going home, but someone," he grins, nodding down to their daughter, "got surgery hungry, so we stayed," Derek explains, hoping she won't be too mad.

"Bailey has a fever?" her eyes widen.

"He's okay now," Derek says, glancing down at the boy in his lap. "Fast asleep. Your transplant bores him."

"I not bored Mama. I wanna see more!" Zola pipes up.

Meredith's eyes sparkle in delight, and Derek swears he can almost see happy tears there. "Really, baby?" she asks, her voice filled with all sorts of emotions.

Zola nods emphatically at his side. "It's just like in your TV videos!"

Meredith blushes even under her mask, sharing a sorry look with Derek. He shrugs.

"You know, Zo," she says, after softly asking for more suction, as she resumes the harvesting of a kidney, "The one doing the surgeries in the videos was my Mommy. Your Nana."

Zola's eyes widen even more. "Can you tell me a story about her sturgeries?"

There are smiles on the faces of the other people in the OR, but Meredith's is gleaming under the bright lights. "Of course. I have lots of stories about her surgeries. I'll tell you one tonight," she says, and she takes a deep breath.

Derek knows she doesn't have stories about much else, but he's glad she can remember her mother like this, passing on her knowledge to Zola. He's sure if Ellis were alive, she would have done it herself.

He doesn't remember much about the woman, he only remembers her Alzheimer-y self, when sometimes he checked up on her after he tried to enroll her in the new drug trial, and she was a charming woman. He's sure Zola would have hung onto her every word if they ever had the chance to talk surgery together. He's glad Zola has Meredith to talk surgery with, though. And he's pretty sure his wife is going to be just as legendary as her mother, someday soon.

"So, now I'm cutting this artery a few millimeters longer than necessary. Why Dr. Radley?"

"To make sure it's long enough for the recipient," the resident replies, without missing a beat.

"Good," Meredith nods. "Do you remember what a kidney is, Zola?" she asks a little louder now, and Zola perks up.

"Umm," she hesitates, scratching her chin in an adorable way.

"Do you remember what Mama has above the dresser, in a jar?" Derek whispers in her ear.

"No hints, Dr. Shepherd," Meredith says, amusement in her tone.

"Oh!" Zola says, jumping up with her hand in the air. "That's the thing that glows, shaped like a bean!"

"Exactly!" Meredith grins brightly. "I'm taking out that from this man."

"Oh, Mama, can I have a kiddy in a jar too?"

Meredith laughs loudly. Derek chuckles as well. He probably needs to find a way to steal another kidney sometime soon.

"It makes for a pretty nightlight, Lovebug. It really does."

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**A/N: Before I leave you, I wish you all a happy Easter if you celebrate it. If not, happy Sunday! **


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